


See What Remains

by define_serenity



Category: Glee
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Altered Carbon Fusion, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Torture, Graphic Description, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:55:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25798537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/define_serenity/pseuds/define_serenity
Summary: ‘Focus,’ Blaine said. ‘Focus on what you care most about in this world with–’Sebastian jackknifed awake, instantly restrained by the cuffs around his wrists, the strap across his chest, tied down to a gurney that left a permanent chill at his back, an ill foreboding of whatever else his interrogator had in store.[While being tortured in virtual, Sebastian falls back on his Envoy training, remembering every lesson Blaine taught him about getting back to the real.]
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Sebastian Smythe
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	See What Remains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anisstaranise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anisstaranise/gifts).



> _Altered Carbon_ au. So, at some point **@anisstaranise** said 'Seblaine as Envoys' and my brain said 'angst' and this is the direct result of that, and I've always wanted to write more scifi! Title taken from _Remains_ by Maurissa Tancharoen. Special thanks to **@virdant** for reading through this for me!
> 
> Happy Birthday, @anisstaranise!

_But our love it was stronger by far than the love_

_Of those who were older than we -_

_Of many far wiser than we -_

_‘Focus,’_ Blaine said.

 _‘Focus on what you care most about in this world with_ – _’_

Sebastian jackknifed awake, instantly restrained by the cuffs around his wrists, the strap across his chest, tied down to a gurney that left a permanent chill at his back, an ill foreboding of whatever else his interrogator had in store. His heart beat fast, ears ringing from the gunshot that’d rung out— was it moments ago? hours? The bullet that cleaved through his forehead still ricocheted around in his skull; whiplash spun around his spiral column.

Sebastian yanked at the cuffs, but they didn’t budge.

Goddamn, he hated getting shot.

Hunter knew that.

Plenty of nice ways to die, but bullets left behind a trace memory, not so much the pain and death that followed but a concussive trajectory that recollected older wounds. And he’d been shot more times than he could count.

Virtual made it all the worse. No time to recover, regroup, make up a new game plan; you got what you saw and what he saw—

Programs like these pulled subliminal memories of trauma, put victims in places they felt trapped, where the walls enclosed them so tight they may as well be the outer confines of a coffin. So of course he found himself back where he started, in the room Hunter recruited him over ten years ago.

The blue-checked walls were unmistakable, the humid stench of bodies, and now, also, the copper scent of his own blood.

“Good, you’re awake,” Hunter said, wiping blood off his hands.

He wore a younger sleeve than last time he saw him, and Sebastian wondered if Hunter’s vanity had gotten the best of him, or if the Protectorate sprung for this new body, a new combat sleeve with enhanced battle conditioning. Didn’t matter much. In here, Hunter pulled the strings no matter the body he inhabited.

Envoy 101. Accept that they control the construct.

Beat the player, not the game.

“Worried, were you?” he asked, his voice unsteady, shaking, and he strains against the cuffs thinking maybe, this time, they’ll give half an inch, half a millimeter— Blaine would be proud and he’d be a step closer to the real, to the next screen.

Hunter tapped a finger at his forehead. “Don’t want you losing your mind just yet.”

Sebastian chuckled humorlessly, “This you playing nice, then?” fighting the despair, his true enemy. He tried fighting his way out, but without any neurochem enhancement he proved no match for Hunter; the older soldier, his mentor in so many ways, beat him back and strapped him down with a snap of his fingers.

 _‘Can’t kill your way out of everything_ ,’ Blaine’s voice rings through his mind.

For the first time in a long time he rode a regular sleeve, albeit in virtual, pathetically human and weak and he’d never felt more like that ten-year old caught between two impossible choices. Go to prison and never see Santana again. Or join the Protectorate to ensure Santana’s care.

Whatever remained of that ten-year old died in this room, like he’d died in it a few times over now— ten times, fifty, a hundred.

He lost count.

After a while it’s inevitable; the deaths stacked up like a house of cards, each one set down with more trembling hands, each one felt more acutely with the last one still fresh in your memory until it’s the knowledge of the next one that sets you on edge. After a while the waiting kills you a little too, no hope of real death, no release, but rather an endless stack of cards upon cards until eventually, inevitably, you broke.

And everyone broke.

Every nerve in his body jumped at the sound of a blowtorch igniting, and his mind erupted in hysteria; he thrashed around on the gurney but only his will yielded, spilling fear and helplessness into every atom of his body, drowning out Blaine’s voice—

“Look at you.”

Hunter stepped closer, the tip of the burner so close to his cheek he felt the skin char.

“N-no,” he stuttered and faced away, but Hunter brought the torch in closer until the flame licked his skin and it melted like polythene, his cheekbone snapped under the heat, and he screamed, he screamed, he screamed, for the fire to devour him in his entirety.

 _‘Wait,’_ Blaine said, _‘for the weakness in your enemy.’_

“You were one of the best, Sebastian. To think I spent all that time training you.”

He screamed until he could scream no more, until the fire consumed his teeth and tongue and vocal cords and he, mercifully, passed out.

No conditioning in the known universe could prepare someone for virtual torture.

Just like his body held his mind and soul, the cortical stack inserted between his C1 and C2 vertebrae held his consciousness, his memories, his thoughts, his feelings.

Digital Human Storage technology rendered chemical and hypnotic torture obsolete— bodies could be coded to withstand most all toxins and enhanced mental conditioning prepared soldiers for death, but it’d opened other avenues. Stick a human consciousness in virtual and you could kill a man stone cold dead. Wake him up. Kill him again. Over and over. In virtual, pain had no limits, no mercy, suffering encompassed the universe and your whole universe comprised suffering.

Meanwhile his physical body lay on a slab somewhere, unaffected.

 _‘You are not trapped,’_ Blaine said, _‘You’re waiting.’_

Walls of blue solidified in his peripheral vision again. He wakes up to Hunter already talking, “–smoke out your little Uprising,” while memories of fire licked his skin, bullets bounced back and forth inside his skull, his ears rang, and still, tugging at his cuffs made no difference. His breathing deepened, his despair pushed to its outer limit, he watched Hunter turn to him with a self contented smile.

“Who would’ve thought there’d be a stronghold right here on Harlan’s World.”

Those same blue walls closed in on him as Hunter advanced on him holding a large empty syringe.

“We’ll find him, Smythe.”

Fresh sweat broke out all over his skin at the mere mention of Blaine, the man who’d saved him from himself.

“Without or without your help, we’ll find Blaine Anderson,” Hunter said. “Spin him up in virtual.”

Hunter held up the syringe for his closer inspection and it killed him a little, chipped at whatever resolve still stood between him and complete surrender. The thought of Blaine undergoing this too, however much more experience he had in virtual, tore at that resolve all the more.

“Want me to show you what I’ll do to him?”

Then, without flinching, Hunter stuck the needle between two of his ribs and collapsed his left lung.

 _‘Focus,’_ Blaine whispered, _‘Focus on what you care most about in this world with–’_

No conditioning in the known universe could prepare him for this kind of torture.

But Blaine taught him a trick or two.

Under extreme stress the mind did interesting things. Hallucination. Displacement. Retreat.

Whatever blind reactions his body had to outward adversity Blaine taught him to channel.

Beat the player. Not the game.

In Blaine’s simulation, the one all Envoys-in-training underwent, it hadn’t been this room; instead he had found himself in his foster father’s house, hanging on chains by his wrists, feet dangling several feet above the floor— the room made sense; in it lived the ten-year old boy Blaine saw in him, the boy inside the man the Protectorate burnt out, the innocent who went as far as to kill his foster father to stop him from laying a hand on his sister.

Whatever remained of that ten-year old lived in this room and this room alone, hugging Santana close while they waited for the police to arrive. Their bastard foster father real death-ed. Stack blown out.

A voice, the same voice, sounded for the tenth? fiftieth? hundredth time?

“Delete the chain.”

Blaine.

Flanked by a dozen CTAC Praetorians. He called them brothers once, these soldiers, before he betrayed them like Hunter betrayed him years before. By now he’d fought them a hundred times over in this very room and still he found himself chained, bloodied. Trapped.

His shoulders burned, his wrists bloody where the chains dug into his skin. “What?”

Blaine’s eyes narrowed on his face, a small delighted twinkle in the corner of one of them.

He spit blood. “You’re enjoying this.”

“We all had to do this, Sebastian.”

“You’re keeping me in longer. The others out already?”

“You have more to answer for.”

Sebastian smiled, tasting blood in his mouth. “Or maybe you have more to prove.”

“Delete the chain,” Blaine reiterated, calm incarnate.

All of them went through this, Brit and Sam, Santana, all here to serve a higher purpose as Blaine’s Envoys. The Uprising.

As a Praetorian, he used to kill people like Blaine, quelled rebellions in their early stages, infiltrated groups that arose in opposition to the UN’s interests; the Protectorate taught him how to torture, burnt out any evolved violence limitation instinct and replaced it with the conscious will to do harm.

And now Blaine sought to disprove that, prove he wasn’t what the Protectorate made him into, a mindless killing machine, and that Blaine hadn’t made a mistake bringing him into the fold.

Blaine couldn’t be more right. He had more to pay for.

“Delete the chain,” Sebastian whispered under his breath, bringing his chin to his chest as he focused on each of the curved metal links.

The chain had disappeared. He landed firmly on both feet.

 _‘Get to the next screen,’_ Blaine said.

The needle slipped between his ribs stabbed through him like a knife, tearing deeper into flesh and tendons and muscles the more breath he tried to catch. His body strained against the intrusion but the slightest shift worsened the pain.

“We know you’re holed up in the forest,” Hunter’s voice sounded somewhere above him.

His vision blurred with tears, the pain radiated to his shoulder, his back, and when he coughed, he coughed up blood.

“Only a matter of time before we smoke you out,” Hunter said. “Trace one of your needlecasts to their source.”

 _‘Make him think you’re broken_.’

“Hallucination, displace–” Sebastian whispered, eyes rolling back in his head.

Any moment he would lose consciousness again and miss his window.

“I can’t–” He coughed. “Have to get–”

“You’re talking to yourself.” Hunter laughed. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Needle pulled back, he caught a merciful breath of air.

_‘Take control of the construct.’_

“Now.” Blaine had stepped forward in the room plucked straight from his childhood nightmares. “Delete the Praetorians.”

Shoulders rolling, Sebastian looked at the soldiers, his once brothers-in-arms, and made them disappear into thin air with little to no effort.

“Good.” Blaine advanced another step. “It won’t be that easy with me.”

He regarded Blaine then as if for the first time, the strong leader of the Uprising, the big and beautiful eyes; however much Blaine saw the good in him he understood the conflict in Blaine too, the weight he carried, the responsibility he felt toward those he recruited. How little he ever took for himself.

“Yes, it will,” he said, closing the distance between them with one more step. “I already know your weakness.”

Beat the player. Not the game.

“You can pretend all you want,” he said softly. “But you care about me.”

At long last, Blaine blinked, a subtle hint of a chink in his armor, one he’d caught a few times over the past few weeks whenever Blaine looked at him. Like him, Blaine never let anyone past his defenses, not when that person could so easily slip a knife between his ribs, slit his throat while he slept, betray everything he worked so hard to build. Blaine showed him how to trust the person next to him, reminded him family could be found in the most surprising places.

In Blaine he saw a boy reaching for the stars, a romantic at heart, fighting against an unjust world.

Blaine swallowed hard. “What are you saying?”

“You’re going to tell me how to get to the next screen.”

For a moment Blaine froze stock-still, but the boy appeared in his eyes, stretched a hand out to him and accepted that maybe, he’d been right— despite everything the Protectorate took there remained a boy inside him too, one who’d stood up to his father and fought injustice, one who’d protected his foster sister when she couldn’t protect herself.

“Focus,” Blaine said, “Focus on what you care most about in the world, with every atom of your existence.”

He raised a hand to Blaine’s face, stroking a thumb over his cheek. All these years, all this time, he thought he’d been better off alone.

Their lips a hair’s breadth apart, Blaine had shivered—“Rip yourself open and you can rip a hole in the virtual world,” Blaine said, before his lips touched Blaine’s, before his childhood nightmare disintegrated with a hiss and a crackle, and only a space between the virtual and the real remained, carved out just for them.

 _‘That’s how you get back to the real,’_ Blaine now whispered in his ear, ‘ _That’s how you get to the next screen.’_

Now. He had to act now. Make Hunter believe he could break any moment, make Hunter think him weak, until the moment he discovered, he was anything but.

Sebastian pulled at one of his cuffs and this time, at last, it gave.

He ripped his left arm free, then his right, and sat up on the rickety gurney, shivering, stumbling, crashing to his knees on the cold concrete.

“How did you do that?” he heard Hunter’s voice behind him, but he had eyes only for Blaine, standing in a corner of the room, his arms crossed over his chest, and that delectable twinkle in his eyes. Pride.

The hallucination kneeled before him, and as he placed the tips of his fingers on his sternum he knew— burn away his flesh, grind his bones to dust, shatter his stack into a million pieces, what remained could rip a hole through the universe.

All that remained.

 _‘Focus,’_ Blaine said.

_‘Focus on what you care most about in the world.’_

His fingers broke skin, passed through bone and marrow, and grabbed around his heart.

He pulled it free easily, and it beat still, in the palm of his hand. All that remained. All that mattered. The one thing no Protectorate nor real death could ever burn out of him.

“Take it,” he whispered, handing his heart over. “It’s yours.”

Blaine looked at him with all the love in the known universe; golden specks of light danced inside brown irises, his sense of self contained in them.

“From the moment I met you,” he said, and a tear slipped down his cheek. “It’s yours.”

“Who are you talking to?” sounded behind him, Hunter caught on to his escape.

 _‘Sebastian,’_ Blaine said, _‘Get to the next screen.’_

Their foreheads touched, their hands linked, and with Blaine’s pulse beating steady under his fingertips he focused on every point of contact, reaching across the hollow for something real.

With a crackle and a hiss that sounded like static rain, the outer edges of his body started to disintegrate.

Sebastian woke with a start, back in the real.

**\- fin -**


End file.
